Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin gave historic speeches this week addressing the consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine with all eyes on what's to come in year two.
Biden started the week of the anniversary of Putin's invasion of Ukraine with a surprise and daring visit to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky during a trip to Poland to meet with European allies. In his meeting with Zelensky and in a subsequent speech in Warsaw, Biden reaffirmed his commitment to aiding Kyiv throughout the war.
TIMELINE OF RUSSIA'S YEARLONG WAR IN UKRAINE
"Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. As you know, Mr. President, I said to you at the beginning, he’s counting on us not sticking together. He was counting on the inability to keep NATO united. He was counting on us not to be able to bring in others on the side of Ukraine," Biden said on Monday alongside Zelensky. "He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now."
A day later, Putin gave a highly anticipated speech to parliament that featured many of the standard Kremlin justifications of the war: mainly, a neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv despite Zelensky's Jewish heritage and an increasingly aggressive NATO, despite the alliance's defensive nature.
"We are not at war with the people of Ukraine. I have made that clear many times. The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military, and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources," Putin claimed.
The backdrop of both addresses is the one-year anniversary of Putin's invasion on Friday. The war was not expected by most to last even half this long, but Ukraine's fierce will to resist proved a strong advantage over the Russian military, which consists largely of conscripts, young men, and convicts fighting in exchange for their freedom. He also announced that Russia would be suspending its participation in the New START Treaty with the U.S., which regulates both countries' nuclear arsenals. The Kremlin has nevertheless indicated its intent to keep abiding by some of the agreement's regulations.
Putin expected to quickly topple the Kyiv government, but his forces got held up on the northern outskirts of town and, in the process, revealed several inexplicable miscues that raised significant questions about their actual capabilities. Near the end of March, Russian troops in the area retreated and leaders announced a new main objective, capturing the Donbas region, which is in the eastern region of Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have sought to join the Russian Federation for years.
The first year of the war has taken an incalculable toll on the civilians of Ukraine, millions of whom have been displaced while thousands have been killed or wounded. Entire cities have been turned into ruin and rubble, while multiple cities previously under Russian control revealed overwhelming and sickening war crimes and crimes against humanity, including execution-style killings, torture, and sexual violence.
The Russian president has changed military leaders at various points amid various battleground failures, but a recent public disagreement between Russian defense leaders and the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary group known for its brutal tactics, demonstrates what could be a growing rift between Putin's top defense advisers.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder, accused the top members of the Russian Defense Ministry, including Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, of “treason” for allegedly deliberately giving his troops fewer resources than Russian troops. The ministry defended itself from the accusations while Prigozhin, a day later, posted a photo of bodies of several dozen slain Wagner fighters piled up in a courtyard on Telegram. He later said the situation had been resolved.
A top State Department official said on Thursday that the public nature of the dispute was "unprecedented."
While the war hasn't gone well for Putin or his troops, the sheer magnitude of the forces at his disposal and his willingness to send them into battle are both key advantages for him. They've lost approximately 200,000 soldiers throughout the first year of fighting, and Putin's still sending more troops into Ukraine, many of whom lack proper training.
"Russia continues to pour large numbers of additional people into the fight," Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said earlier this month. "And those people are ill-trained and ill-equipped and because of that, we see them incurring a lot of casualties. And we'll probably continue to see that going forward. That's their strength. They have a lot of people."
The Pentagon has also warned this week that China is considering providing lethal aid to Russia, which would mark a significant moment in the developments of the war. Officials have noted that Beijing has not yet provided such aid, only that they're considering it.
“There will certainly be consequences for China should they deepen their relationship with Russia," Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Wednesday. “We haven’t seen them give lethal aid to Russia at this time for the war, but they also haven’t taken that off the table."
Days after Putin's address to parliament, Putin welcomed China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, to the Kremlin and confirmed a future meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Over the next couple weeks and months, Austin said the U.S. and allies "believe that there'll be a window of opportunity for them to exercise initiative and then change or continue to create the right conditions on the battlefield there."
On the day of the anniversary, the Pentagon announced a new $2 billion aid package that focused on unmanned aerial vehicles, though it left out two of Ukraine's long-standing requests: fighter jets and long-range weapons. Biden has, at times, refused to provide certain weapons it deemed either not suitable for Ukraine's needs or those that prompted concerns about possible Russian escalation, though in multiple instances, he ultimately changed his mind.
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There is bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for providing Ukraine with F-16s and surface-to-surface long-range missile systems (ATACMS), with many arguing that not providing Ukraine with these systems is not giving them the best chance to win the war.
Projecting forward, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that Russia has already “lost” the war, and he explained earlier this week that he doesn’t think “it’s militarily possible for the Russians to achieve their initial strategic objects,” though he added, “The Ukrainians, I think, for this year, it would be very, very difficult, not impossible, but very, very difficult for the Ukrainians to achieve their political objectives.”